Hi everyone and welcome back to People Do Want to Know podcast.
My guest today is an iconic, eclectic and very grounded
artist, Mark Dennis. Mark Dennis is known for his
hyper realistic paintings where he finds new meanings in old
masters and explores contemporary questions of
culture, humor and identity. His inspiration comes from
personal experiences ranging from accidentally starting a
forest fire at age 7 to his days camping in the Puerto Rican
forest as a middle schooler. His art is also sometimes
inspired by his troubled teen years, which include multiple
arrests, knife fights, several gun related incidents, a night
in jail, his day in court, and his highly influential post
college days living in a teepee on a Native American
reservation. All of this you will hear about
in the episode. Mark is also incredibly well
traveled. He's lived in Israel, Rome,
Venice, Florence and Egypt, as well as spent extensive time in
the mountains of Peru. He considers himself a Jewban, a
Jewish Cuban, and is a very acclaimed and respected member
of the art community both as an artist and as an educator.
What I'll add is that despite his turbulent upbringing, Mark
has done an extraordinary amount for the Jewish community and he
is also a highly devoted dad. He's turned himself around but
he's retained still this kind of fun and edgy side.
If you ever see Mark anywhere, he will most likely be wearing
his signature black and white Puma tracksuit.
After we recorded together, we split a potato knish.
He is an easygoing, well-rounded Mensch, and I'm so honored to
know him. Hello, Mark, welcome to PEOPLE.
Do you Wanna Know Podcast? Hi.
Thank you so much for being here.
My. Pleasure iconic tracksuit.
My I'm told I have to wear it forever.
Now. People notice me in art fairs,
they notice me in the street. So, you know, it's sort of a
blessing and a curse. Well, it's a signature look.
I guess so I should be paid by Puma?
Sponsored by Puma OK, please tell us about yourself.
What do you do and how did you get there?
Well, I'm an artist, professor, college professor.
I was a tenured, I left the post at the time to come back to the
city I was teaching upstate. So I now am sort of an
independent instructor, but I'm a full time painter, a full time
single divorced dad of two teenagers, which is a very big
part of my life. And I'm represented with the
gallery here in New York City called Harper's and I'm
represented in Los Angeles with the gallery called a Not Ebgy
Gallery. I'm also a Holocaust researcher
slash scholar, and I take that kind of lightly because it's not
full time, but I taught Holocaust studies as well.
So I take great pride in that as part of my identity.
Tell me a little bit about your Jewish upbringing.
You have teenage kids, but you yourself, as a teenager, were a
big rebel. So I'm curious to know how that
kind of unfolded. What was your Jewish upbringing
like? I love this topic because it
feeds into everything that I kind of stand for today.
It's odd. So let me just say that as a
kid, like maybe six or seven, I drew all the time, all day long,
all night long. My parents were quite happy that
they knew we'd always find me sitting in front of the TV
drawing or looking at a book drawing, or being out in the
backyard drawing birds, whatever it might be.
But I never really wanted to be an artist.
I always thought it was just this hobby that came to me
naturally. I really enjoyed it.
I found some great solace in it. I was also a very active,
restless kid, one of five boys in a relatively Jewish secular
household. However, my dad grew up in Cuba.
He was born in Cuba because my Zadian Bubby Yaakov and Gussie
d'etenko came from a very small shetal outside Kiev, came to
America and were denied entry. They were told at the time, and
this is a quote that my daddy told me before he passed a long
time ago, he said we were told either to go back or to go to
Cuba, where the rest of the Jews are going.
Who knew? I don't know.
He didn't know. He didn't speak any English.
He spoke Russian, Ukrainian and Yiddish.
So he went to Cuba and that's where he raised a family of
four. My dad was one of them.
So my dad in this old Jewish section of Havana was studying
in yeshiva. He was relatively Orthodox.
Did you ever see Fiddler in a Roof?
Well, that's my zadie and my bubby.
They're like, you know, they were the, they were relatively
Orthodox coming from a very small schdettle and made it
work. And then they decided, you know,
let's get out of here because, you know, Castro's taking over
and that was a circus. So they came to Boston because
they learned that they had a cousin and a cousin would would
sponsor them. You had to be sponsored.
And the cousin's last name was DANIS Donis.
And they learned it through a lot of struggles and challenges
trying to find out if they could come to America through a
sponsor. And they discovered that there
was a sponsor outside of Boston, a distant cousin that they never
met. They didn't even meet them when
we came, when they finally got to Boston.
But when they finally got to Boston, it was a man.
It was a guy who who did their paperwork and he said, you got
to change your name for the Tenko.
You got to give it something else.
Like your sponsor here even has a weird name.
Maybe you should find a balance. Like, you know, it's a nice
Irish city. This is what I was told.
And he said, OK, what should we do?
And he said, Dennis, Dennis, that's a good name for you.
And that was it. And my Zadie said, OK, we're
Americans. Thank you.
We're now Dennis's. So because my dad was relatively
Orthodox growing up, in very short time he met my mom, who
was from Roxbury, born in Somerville, but grew up in
Roxbury. My dad, his family moved to
Dorchester on Blue Hill Ave. and we were all born in Boston, me
and my brothers. And he met this woman who was a
secular Jew, Solomon Joy Solomon, Arlene Joy Solomon.
So they got married, they have 5 boys.
And we were raised in a way that was rather, you know, mostly it
leaned secular, but we did all the High Holidays.
I think it was very difficult for him to manage.
There's a term, you know, I never really knew what it meant
herding cats. But maybe it's good now because
to have Shabbat with five of us, 5 teenage boys a year apart,
dating, sports, it was really challenging.
Friday nights were big nights for football and whatnot.
So I think he gave that up and my dad ultimately just became a
secular Jew as well. I, however, and this is loops us
back to when I was drawing as a kid, became fascinated with my
ancestry. Like my Zadie and Bubby passed
away. My Nana and Poppy on my mom's
side were Polish, Hungarian. Maybe there's Lithuanian in
there. I wasn't sure.
Like, no one really knew about the family.
And then I learned I had cousins living in Jerusalem and Maya
Shereen, which means they're all too Orthodox.
And I'm like, what? I have that.
I have cousins. I don't know.
I mean, my mother said, yeah, Mark, you know, she speaks.
She's from Boston. So Mark is Mark, you know, you
got cousins everywhere. I mean, you want to meet him,
reach out. I don't know.
You know what? I don't have to tell you.
It's really hard, you know? But then I began to reach out,
and I did my research. And in 2001, I learned that I
could go to Israel and maybe look for my cousins and Mayor
Shireen, They're like, maybe. I don't know.
I wanted to try at least some point.
And at that time, I was engaged in dialogue with my secular
cousin who lived in Jerusalem, but he wasn't Alto Orthodox.
He was, you know, like I said, secular.
And we started chatting and he said, oh, yeah, you know, not
only that, but you're really, you know, we have associations
directly to Auschwitz Beer Canal.
And I'm like, wait, what? And he says, yeah, cousins from
the Klein family have we're all on paperwork had been murdered
at Beer Canal. And, you know, most people don't
know that Auschwitz is a massive camp of three camps.
There's Auschwitz one. There's Auschwitz 2, which was
otherwise Beer Canal, and then they had man of it, which was a
work camp, part of all the, the larger concentration camp unit.
And I said, tell me more. So he told me, he gave me a list
of the names like I, he had a copy of the paperwork.
Somehow you could find it. Yet Bashem had paperwork, the
Auschwitz memorial and Oshvichim Poland had it.
I think that's how you pronounce it, Oshvichim.
So in the Germans change names all the time.
So I had learned that on my mother's side of the family, we
lost 24 people at Beer Canal, murdered.
And then we had seven distant cousins also on the Klein family
who froze to death in the woods as partisan fighters.
And this really empowered me to do more research.
So based upon my research, by the way, I never, I did get to
Israel several times and I never met my cousins.
They were unreachable. I mean, may I share?
It was really hard to penetrate and no one really knew who I
wasn't, you know. So may I share him?
I don't know if that was filmed. May I share him?
I have to look into it. But it's, it's like that.
It's a community like that really.
So imagine like Williamsburg, you know, stacked high up and if
you see the movie, which busy and I think it's filmed
relatively close, which is fascinating movie by the way.
OK, so because I was interested in art and I did my research on
the Holocaust, I went to Yad Vashem.
This is how it all started for me.
All my studies on the show. I started on this day, 2005.
I walk into Yad Vashem and on the wall was a small drawing of
the moon. The black and white sort of ink
study like a it looked interesting and then it read
Peter, Peter PITER, you know, like a Czech spelling Peter Gins
that had seen what that is in stock is the Germans called, you
know, the so-called paradise ghetto that Hitler had named so
that when the American when the International Red Cross came to
the Prague, they would see that the Jews were being treated
fairly. But it was all a sham.
You know, there's a soccer field and whatnot, but these are this
was like a stopping point to go on to other concentration camps,
mostly algebra. So and this was in Prague.
So the little drawing in the wall said, you know that it's
seen Peter Ginns, age 15. And then it had like a date,
which I probably didn't pay much attention to because I walked
immediately up to the person who was manning well to woman.
So I don't know. It was the person that behind
the front desk. And I said, could you please
explain to me why you would have a a teenager do a rendering of a
moon saying it's like moon over Auschwitz?
I mean, why would isn't that odd?
Like, was this an assignment or she goes, no, that's an actual
drawing that someone made who was in that had seen the
concentration camp or the otherwise referred to as, you
know, a prison. And I said, wait, what?
They made art in the concentration camps?
And she said, well, yeah, I mean, it's actually a very
popular subject amongst certain scholars, but it's really not
been studied thoroughly except by two people, you know, and we
have some of the artwork here in the building.
And I said, well, I would give anything.
At the time, I had just accepted a teaching position, full time
tenured professor position at a small liberal arts College in
upstate New York. And I was on break now.
And I thought, wow, you know, this could, I could bring back
some of this information. I could share it.
And this is really important for me because being a professor,
you know, academia really mattered.
I was more of a professor at the time than a full time painter.
I mean, I mean, I was painting, but being a professor, I took
great pride in that. And I wanted to gather as much
information as possible to share in that context.
And well, may I see the drawings?
I mean, am I allowed to? I mean, she was, well, who are
you? I said, well, I'm, you know, I'm
a professor of painting and drawing at a small school in the
in upstate New York in America. And, you know, I'm a Jew.
And it turns out that I have cousins who perished in
Birkenau. And I would like to learn more
about this and being an artist, I think this would be incredible
information for a lot of reasons.
And she said, absolutely, let's go.
I was like, wait, what? That easy?
She goes, yeah, I'm going to introduce you to the curator.
And so we went upstairs, and I have a really cool photo because
the curator said, you know, you got to prove to people that you
were here, they're not going to believe you.
And, you know, I had a camera 2005.
So I went up with white gloves, and I handled artwork.
And I noticed that they were made in various concentration
camps. I mean, I'm thinking, wait,
what? These are made in the camp?
I mean, not just in that it seemed, which I learned later
had an art program specifically so that the children imprisoned
could make art to impress the International Red Cross, you
know, to to appease the world. You know, like this is like 1939
to 40 before, you know, it really hit the fan after the
Japanese bomb, Pearl Harbor, when we got involved and it
became massive deportation of Jews throughout Eastern Europe.
And I said to her, well, why would they make art?
How did they make art? Like, where did they get the
supplies? Like what?
And that's what led me. I'm very proud of this.
I wrote, it's essentially a book, but it's a syllabus that I
wrote that I brought back to the Dean and the president of the
small school that I was teaching.
And I had requested that they review it and maybe included in
a historical component for whoever teaches world history.
And they said, well, this is a lot of art in here, why don't
you teach it? I said, well, I don't have a
masters in our history. I mean, you know, but the
faculty like me, I, you know, there's a lot of politics and
academia, but the faculty read it and they're like, they were
blown away by it. And they said, let's, let's
teach this. You can teach it.
So I taught this course called Under the Floorboards Hidden Art
of the Holocaust, because I had learned that mostly the artists
that were imprisoned, which was the other question I asked
myself if I were imprisoned as a Jew and as an artist, you know,
I think I'm pretty skilled. And the Nazis loved academic
art. They loved people who were
skilled. They loved representational art,
realism. So they would have loved my
skill set. They would have hated me, but
they would have forced me to make paintings of visiting
dignitaries or portraits of Hitler or Goering Himmler and
put them in the, you know, in the houses of the concentration
camp officers and, and the people who oversaw the camp
structure. So I had put together this
incredible syllabus and I taught it for 14 years and it became an
obsession and it just grew and it got larger.
And then I began to meet survivors.
And then I thought about the fact that these survivors would
not be around. Fast forward 10 years, which is
kind of where we are today, and they're not around very few.
So I joined forces with a friend of mine from Tel Aviv who was a
filmmaker, and we interviewed one particular survivor named
Deena Jacobson for I believe it was 7-8 hours, her entire story,
taking breaks. She was old.
Her husband had just passed, but I had met them upstate and I'd
become like best friends with them.
So I had this is before I was married with kids.
So we're talking like 2005 to 2015.
I had Shabbat with them. I had I would go over just to
have cookies and milk with Dina because she would make, she'd
call me and say, you know, you have to eat today and come over.
I have cookies and I'm like, OK, well, I have class in like an
hour. Well, you know, she lived down
the street from the school and we got to become best friends.
And she would tell me her story. And I said, you know, Dina,
before you know, we have to, I want to record this.
I want you to. She goes, whatever you want to
do, I'll work with you. I'll do this with you.
And she sat like we are now right in front of me.
I had a camera on my head so that there was no like she would
be looking, you know, people look at the camera like you just
said to me earlier. And so it's me in front of her
and, you know, and it's her looking directly at me.
And the idea of this film is for the survivor to tell their
story. So it's Dina telling her story.
There are other survivors, but there's so much work in editing
and things of that nature that I'm focusing on Deena Jacobson's
testimony and she's looking directly out at the viewer.
So it's like just her head speaking to whomever will take
the time to watch it. It's in the editing phase.
It's a lot of work. And this has been going on for
years. I was.
Going to say it was like 20 years at this point that this
has been in the works then. Right.
So that's when kids. So I got married, had kids, and
I, I don't know what else to say, but unless somebody
understands what it means to be a parent, devoted, dedicated, I
mean, you could be a, you know, a parent, but I took, I took
great pride in that more than anything in my life.
And I became That was mine. As you're speaking, I have this
thought that, you know, you're telling me the story of an
academic and a professor and like this, like, artsy Mensch
who has dedicated his career to the community.
But there's another dimension of you that's like, kind of a
troublemaker and someone who pushes boundaries and does
unconventional things. As you were speaking, I was
curious. You know, you mentioned to me
that you lived on a Native American reservation.
When was that in the timeline? So let me loop.
Back and why? Why did you even do?
It kind of sidestepped it. So I was drawing all the time as
a kid and I loved it. And I found great solace.
And I did say that I didn't want to be an artist.
I wanted to be, you know, I don't know, a zoologist, a
veterinarian. I had a lot of different
thoughts, mostly had to do with animals of all kinds.
You know, people think animals are just, we're animals.
Spiders are animals. So Fast forward to high school,
you know, even before high school 14, I was, you know, 8th
grade, I started stealing things.
I was pretty good at it. I don't know where to go with
this. I would walk into a store like
Walmart and just, you know, clip a block on a bike and walk out
with it. Why did you want to steal?
Stuff I don't know. I don't know.
I've been asked that question a lot, mostly by the cops when
they got me because I did get caught, which changed my life,
which is why I'm an artist, oddly enough.
But I don't know, I, I, it was a challenge.
I was restless. I was a good kid.
I did good. I did well in school.
I never flunked the class while art one year, but that's another
story. So I just didn't go to class.
But anyway, I'm in high school now and I'm 15.
I'm a sophomore and I went on a tear.
I robbed, I stole, I broke into homes, I broke into businesses.
I never went into a bedroom to take personal things.
But, you know, I stole things out of people's garages, mostly
because I had run into a group of oddly bikers in the area.
I can't really say much about this, but they always said to
me, you know, if you can get me a, you know, Makita drill set,
you know, I'll give you 100 bucks for 50 bucks or whatever.
And, you know, I was 15. It was great.
I'm. And this was in Massachusetts.
Yeah, so in and around the suburbs, I mean this, I have a
lot of stories. I mean, so many stories that got
me into trouble. But ultimately it comes down to
the fact that I did get bussed. I got arrested, cuffed, taken to
jail, and then naturally, I was released.
But I had a court date. And in court, again, I didn't
know what was going to happen. But I was told prior as I
entered the courtroom, I was told prior by the judge who met
me independently. She said, I'm going to give you
20 minutes to explain yourself, you know, to a jury of your
parents, peers, like they were all adults, people's homes
apparently, who I violated, cars I stolen, people who own those,
whatever. I was so scared.
But I, I thought, you know, I got to get a second check.
I got something, I mean, something good has to come out
of this because that's just the way I thought.
And I went off 20 minutes when the judge said you have 20
minutes to talk. We're all going to listen.
It's just you. Even if you pause, it's still
your time. We're not going to interrupt
till 20 minutes are up. Everybody here knows that.
I understand being 15 1/2. You know, you could be a little
nervous, but take your time. My God, I non-stop.
I talked non-stop, no breaks. I don't even think I breathed
about how I love art, of how I love comic books, mainly of how
my goal in life once I graduate high school is to put.
These are my words because I had this weird patriotic bent where
I would where I. Said that I wanted to be one of
those people who who could bring the old traditional American
comic book back to the forefront so that Annie Mae would take a
backseat you've. Literally done that now, which
is the crazy part, OK. Well, you're really wonderful
for saying that. But so she's looked, they're
listening and non-stop. And then she leans forward and
she has 2 letters in her hands. She's I'm going to read these
letters out loud. And I was like, what?
You got letters who? You know who I didn't write AI
don't know who wrote a letter like what is this going to?
Who wrote the letters? I didn't know, you know, I was
my head was all over the place. And she said one of your letters
is from your teacher. It appears that you're on the
that you were on the yearbook committee and you know, that's a
little funky. I mean, I didn't want I was too
cool of a kid to like let people know that, But so I looked at
it. I was like really, you know that
I mean, you know, because I was like a hard ass, like, you know,
and you know, I had long hair and I wore AT shirt.
I had a shirt. I had a collar shirt in court,
but, you know, I was like that tough kid and I didn't want
people to know that. And I was like, well, is this
relevant? And she says, yeah, well, I'm
gonna have to read this letter, Mr. Dennis, so please let me
read this. And apparently the teacher who
ran the yearbook club in the yearbook committee was also my
English teacher. And, you know, I didn't really
know that at the time. I mean, I knew that, but I
didn't. I didn't know the teachers took
on clubs like was my. I only did it because they asked
me to be on it. And I liked one of the girls on
on the club because I could draw.
And they're like, dude, you could, can you put, can you draw
caricatures of teachers for the yearbook?
Can you draw cartoons and football players and, you know,
whatever. And it's like, yeah, I would
love to do that. You're going to put it in print.
So that was my motive, my motivation rather.
And. And so she reads the letter and
he said, and the letter states that Mark Dennis is a very
talented kid. He's a little restless, a little
problematic, some other words. But, you know, he's a really
good kid. And, you know, like, give him a
second chance, in other words. And then the other letter was
from the vice principal at the school who had said Mark is a
good kid, He's very well liked. No doubt he's a handful.
But I, you know, it's very touching.
He had said that I think the kids going to go places, that's
simple. And she said I'll make a
decision. And I didn't know anything till
like the next morning. But they gave me my second
chance. Do you think your parents had a
role that they played in that or it was all the school?
Because I imagine your Jewish parents must have had a heart
attack at that rate. Yeah, they were pissed.
Yeah. Yeah, I remember.
It's right here. I remember every second.
When my dad came to pick me up at the jail, he waited, rightly
so. He waited.
And then, you know, he was pissed.
You know, I still don't know really why I did what I did, but
I was always getting into trouble.
I mean, you know, in second grade, I lit the woods on fire
and started a forest fire. So I mean, that was a real big
mess at the time. And everybody thought, oh, this
kid, like I was Dennis the Menace.
I was the Dennis the Menace in real life.
Once you kind of had your second chance, what brought you to the
Native American reservation? So like I said, I had really
long hair, but I was very intrigued by Plains tribes
culture, specifically Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho.
I was really curious about the American West, and I was more
curious about the way that many of the tribes defeated the
cavalry post Civil War, like Custer.
I really want to know what happened.
I was really interested in their culture in the sense that it was
important to me to understand because it was what the history
of this country was prior to the arrival of the Europeans.
So I did a lot of research and I began to study the language,
Lakota language, which is otherwise referred to as the
Western Sioux Indians. And I began to learn the
language. I thought it was really
intriguing. I began to wore wore shirts.
I had shirts made out of deerskin.
Like I was that kid in high school.
See, I'm telling you, I went to the prom.
I mean, I got stories and I had long hair, you know, like like
as long as yours, if not a little bit longer dark.
I couldn't grow any facial hairs and people thought I was like
this half breed this, you know, like I was either Apache who I
also studied the the the different Apache traps because
Geronimo really interested me, but that wasn't his Apache name.
So I wanted to learn about Crazy Horse that shouldn't go with go.
I wanted to learn about sitting Bull.
You know, I wanted to learn all about their culture, all about
their wars. So one thing led to another.
And then I went out West much later after high school.
And while I was out West, I ran into a full blooded Lakota
Indian at a restaurant. And he came over to me because
he heard me say, you know, Hoka, hey, or stay low.
I was talking to some other guy and he's like, do you speak my
language? And I said, are you at Lakota?
He said, yeah. He says, you know, my name is
Daryl. And we started talking, and then
he said, I want to invite you to the res, which was to me an
incredible opportunity. Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in
what state? South Dakota.
So anyway, it butts up against another Indian Reservation
called Rosebud, which is where he was born.
But his relatives and his sister now lived on Pine Ridge, which
was a bigger reservation for, like, where, you know, Crazy
Horse lived and Red Cloud Pia Luta, where you could see the
Wounded Knee Memorial. So I went and I stayed with his
sister, Darlene Wounded Shield. That's her name, but she also
goes by Ibis Milk. They have two names.
A lot of the lot of the Lakota Indians I've met and befriended
had two names. It was an incredible experience.
And then they said you have to meet our holy man.
You know, Richard Moves Camp. That was his name on the rez.
The rez is pretty big. I mean, you know, compared to
the entire state of South Dakota, you know, and the
surrounding region, this is, it's very small for what they
knew. Like they no longer were
nomadic, you know, Buffalo hunters, but they were now on a
rez, you know, since like 18891890.
And he said to me, you can live in my teepee on the edge of a
Creek, but you got to like, it's a ride.
He had a big property. He had a lot of property.
And it was like an hour right across his property because he
was a very popular guy. I think he's still alive,
actually. So I said, OK, cool.
So I learned really how to utilize a teepee, which I did
not know. I was unfamiliar how the flaps
work and how you get a fire in the center going and how it
stays so warm because I was wicked nervous because it snowed
that night. And this was April 9th and it
snowed. And I'm thinking, Oh my God, I'm
going to live in a teepee during my first time and it's going to
snow. But I had to learn how to
control the flaps. It's incredible, actually.
So, you know, I spent some time out there a couple of months and
came back east and I was late 90s not and then I took a
teaching job upstate. And so my life is comprised of
all these, you know, pocketed interests that are being fed all
the time. I'm still very much interested
in Plains tribe history, obviously the Holocaust and and
painting. I mean now I'm a full time I
left my teaching post. And your art a kind of spans a
couple of different things from what I saw last.
All of it feels kind of like hyper realistic, but cartoonish
in a sense. And it has this depth where you
feel like you're immersed into the whatever you're looking at.
So if there's a Bunny with a bubble, the bunny's like right
there in front of you in your face.
And then at the same time you have the Jewish art that you
make and you're you have a self-portrait right, that you've
made where you're dressed like an Orthodox man.
What kind of inspires these completely different pieces?
Or how are you thinking about what you want to create?
That's a really good question. As an artist, I really do it to
make sense of the world I live in.
I don't know if it's anybody else's world, but you know, we
share a world and we also, you know, we all have our own
imaginations. And so I combine the 2.
So I take what it, I understand is the real world, the real and
physical world, and then I sort of allow it to merge with my
imaginary world. So I'm kind of creating an
alternate reality in my work. And I always thought that if
that's the case, how are people going to know it's me?
Like, how are they going to know it's my work?
Because my style is not that unique.
I'm AI, am a hyper realist. That's a term which someone
applied to the nature of someone who paints very realistically,
but not from directly from a photograph.
Maybe using photographs as reference, but they don't copy a
photograph, which is what the photorealists did.
They work directly from the photo.
I violate the photo. I have many, many photos.
I work from, you know, photos being a screen, whatever the
case. So I thought, well, I'm going to
incorporate, you know, things about me, my identity, my sense
of humor, the fact that I grew up on comic books.
So I, I applied it all and I and I'm and it's been really
successful. So for some reason it's working.
It resonates with people and there was a so delightful and it
has just like a light heartedness about it that I
think really draws people in. Yeah, thank you.
Look, we all know that there's a there's an incredible sense of
division amongst probably every country is sort of at an
imaginary civil war in their minds.
Everybody takes sides. I try to see both sides and, you
know, nurture myself and make sure that I'm taking care of my
kids in the way that I need to as they're dead.
But as an artist, I don't care what people want.
I think about what is going to inspire and motivate me to spend
12 to 18 hours alone in the studio.
And believe me, you said earlier that I was a Mensch.
I love people. Well, you know, it's really hard
being alone in the studio for that long.
So if I'm going to be in the studio for that long, I better
damn well have the proper inspiration.
Like I, I can't think about what other people expect of me.
So I go in there and I just kind of think about my past, my
childhood, my the memories. And the thing that happens most
is that I always want people to feel comfortable, like I care.
Like that's the Mensch part. Like you had mentioned, when you
get up close to my, you know, you feel immersed and you know,
it's like I'm painting blankets for people's minds or their
souls. Like I'm giving them something
to wrap their head around. Like I don't make it difficult.
I don't believe. I don't want it to be too
conceptual. I don't want it to be too
disorienting. I want you to say, oh, you know
what? I know what those, I know what
I'm looking at. But my God, the presentation is
bizarre. Who is this person?
Well, I think that's also the part of the magic, because it's
so obvious. You're like, well, is that what
I'm looking at? What am I supposed to be looking
at? And then you're kind of going
through that stream of consciousness when you look at
your art. Yes.
So when I was teaching, I was told the students, I said,
listen, you're going to have your ideas, you're going to have
your intentions, you're going to have your inspirations.
You know the three I component of making art, ideas, intentions
and inspiration. And there's the three-part,
it's, you do it through experimentation, exploration,
and do all of it with enthusiasm.
So for me, I just, you know, because I, you know, I teach
that because I live it. I want people to take away
whatever it is that they are able or not.
I mean, because I have no control once the piece is done,
how people might respond or how they might react or how it might
reverberate with them later. And I've learned that being an
artist, you know, it's, I'm always taking a chance because
it's all I do. It's all I do is I make art.
And thank God there are people out there who want to live with
it. And believe me, I go to bed
every night. Every night.
First things I think about are my kids.
Second is like, damn, somebody up there likes me.
That's true. That is actually a fact.
You know, art, we talk about this a lot on the show, that art
is a self development process and that's all it is.
And a lot of art is not even, it's kind of like you're just
the vessel for conveying something that's provided to you
outside of, you know, what you believe or how you want to be
received. A true artists are just a vessel
for a greater message. And throughout all these life
experiences, what wisdom do you think you want to pass on to
your kids? Because I can see that like this
chapter of your life that you're in now, you're a very invested
father and that's kind of the project that you're diving
deeply on. So what is it that you you want
to share with them? Yeah, they're 15 and 17.
I always impress upon them to be true to themselves.
You got to let kids go. You got to let them figure shit
out. Like, I mean, no one.
I had no guidance. Obviously, I, I screwed up a
lot. But now that, you know, I'm on
my feet, so to speak, I want I, you know, I I to just be true to
themselves, to listen to the world, figure it out.
Like, don't you know everything in everything in moderation?
There's going to be extremists. There's going to be people who
don't care. There's going to be people who
care too much. You got to take it all in stride
and just figure it out. What about your message to
Jewish people? What would it be?
Well, I don't understand the you mean like, well, be true to
yourself. I think there are people who
question themselves. And I think if you could take a
breather and stop questioning yourself, I mean, you're a Jew.
You're a Jew and live your life. I asked because you and I
originally met at a dinner with a bunch of kind of content
creators and Jewish activists. And a lot of the people in that
room are very outspoken and there's almost an element of
like aggression around this is what we ought to believe as a
Jewish people. Whereas your art, although it is
very clearly Jewish, it doesn't really force any which way what
the viewer should believe, which is a sign of good art.
But I, I wonder how like how you make sense of that because
you're involved in the community and I want to know what, what
you want the Jewish people to do.
Oh wow, that's heavy. I love that Shabbat.
I wish they did more of that. Those Shabbat dinners are great.
I had a lot of fun, and I appreciate having been invited.
And you're right. There are a lot of people who
are in attendance, in attendance, you know, different.
They have a different perspective on things.
So like, going back to advice that my Nana gave me, my mom's
mom, whose relatives perished in Birkenau, although she was born
in America, she would always say to me, Mark, you know, seek
balance because I was a crazy kid, you know, 5 boys.
Yeah. Seek balance.
Like, like, don't like. You don't always have to eat
fast. You don't always have to rush.
You don't always have to like, you know, I don't know what she
was. I imagine it was 9.
And I don't know, I didn't care about balance.
I just, you know. But you remember.
Yeah, because I tell my kids now, everything in moderation,
just seek. Be true to yourself.
Everything in moderation, seek balance, you know, don't get
trapped in conversations you don't want to be part of.
You know, excuse yourself or you know, or go for it.
If you're that person who loves to debate and you're prepared,
go for it. I said the better informed you
are, the more prepared you're going to be for a debate, You
know, whether it's healthy or unhealthy, you're going to be
able to hold your ground. And nowadays, you know, with
this whole, you know, the horrifying events that occurred
on October 7th that pushed everyone to the brink of
figuring out what to do next, You know, I can't tell someone
not to be extreme and I can't tell someone, you know, who's
all chill about it, like to become more active.
Those days are over. I'm not that person.
I'm, I'm focused on. I have like put it this way, I
have a lot of energy, but I, I know where to put it.
I can't be there for everyone all the time anymore because I
used to try to be. But I am certainly a very, I am
involved. I don't know what that
ultimately means to a person listening to this, but I am part
of the community in the sense that I will.
I am in attendance to these lectures and discussion groups
and Zoom calls that people talk about problem solving.
And I don't know if I have the answers.
You know, I come from a family of five boys.
I mean, I, I fucking punched this kid right in the face in
7th grade who called me a kike. Can I curse?
Sorry, this kid called me a kike.
I didn't even know what kike was.
No one had called me a kike up to that point in my life.
But I'm thinking, wait, what? How does he even know I'm a Jew?
Because I knew it had to mean something bad like a bug,
because I had just moved to this new town in Newtonville,
Massachusetts. And this kid, you know, Tony
DeAngelo, walked up to me and he says, hey, kike, you're in my
seat. I'm like, what?
Second day of classes, I just moved there.
I had, I was the new kid, but apparently people knew who I
was. I don't know why.
I don't know how that happened. You know, word spreads a lot in
7th grade. I think it's like a forest fire.
But I got up and I beat the crap out of this kid.
And it turned out to be the toughest kid in the grade
besides one other kid, Kevin Jones.
This black dude who came up to me at lunch that day, He was
like parting the the sea. He comes walking up towards me
in the lunchroom and he said, are you, you know, you?
I heard you kicked D Angelo's ass today.
I'm like, whoa. I mean, I don't know if I
kicked. Yeah, I punched him in the face.
A couple he goes. Yeah, man, that's cool.
I hate that kid. So I got your back from now on.
And he walked away. So so the toughest kid in the
school embraced me because we both felt the kinship.
And it was the first time in my life where I realized, you know,
I now have this identity in the eyes of others.
Like I'm just a Jew growing up at that point, like, you know,
went to temple when we did high holidays, you know, and other
Jewish friends. But I have mostly non Jewish
friends. No one brought it up till it
till it came up, you know, here in 7th grade.
And from that point forward, I thought, you know, I'm proud.
I know who I am. I'm giving back to the
community, not just the Jewish community, but, you know, the
global community. Like, I think what matters most
is not to always wake up angry. It was a big concern of mine
when I was younger. I wasn't just restless.
I was always, I was ready to fight.
I was angry. I was just this kid, you know,
and this teenager and this college kid and I got to a lot
of fights. But one thing I heard most of my
life was funny. You don't look Jewish.
And I keep thinking, my God, this whole Jewish thing is what?
And then when I did the research towards the Holocaust course,
and this is, you know, I'm a man.
I mean, I'm reading about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion,
how it started in Russia and how the Nazis had adopted it.
And then I thought, why? Why were they so?
And then I did all this research on the history of being a Jew,
of Judaism, war, the way that we were viewed in the eyes of
others. And then I was really disturbed
by it and I remain so. But I do it so that if I'm going
to bring light to the fact that I am a Jew, I'm going to imbue
it with my sense of humor because I also think I'm pretty
funny. It's true.
And and so I started this body of work called 3 Jews Walk into
a Bar. And it's the bar that they're
walking into. It's metaphorical because
they're standing in front of a very famous painting by Eduard
Manet called the Follies Bergerie.
And it's a woman's a barmaid staring out.
And it's, you know, the whole, there's a joke, you know, you
could pick it. Anyone could walk into a bar.
Like you could pick a rabbi, a priest and a Buddhist to walk
into a bar, you know, But I thought, fuck it, I'm going to.
I'm a Jew. I'm going to paint about my
identity and the fact that we're funny.
You know, I think for the most part, because if you look at
comic history, not just comic book history, but comical actual
humor history, you know, they're all Jews behind the funny stuff.
People don't know that comic books were started as sort of
like Batman, in particular, Captain America to fight Nazis.
Captain America was only designed to fight the Nazis.
I don't think people even know this, but the comic book
industry, you know? Something I grew up on, I didn't
know at the time. So I began to think, you know
what? If I'm going to fight the fight,
the good fight, I got to do it in the ways that only I can do
it. There's a lot of people out
there that can fight the good fight in the ways that they're
able because of not just their skill sets, but the positions in
which they are in. I'm an artist, so I make
paintings. And the paintings I, you know, I
think they're pretty funny actually.
And people love them. In fact I had no idea that there
would be embraced so so widely. And the majority of buyers are
non Jews. I was there on your opening
night and I think as interesting as it was to see the different
pieces, of course it was more interesting to see who showed up
and how they responded. Wild, right?
It was a wild night. There was a guy with a parrot.
You know who I'm talking. About.
Yeah, and the parrot was a Jew. How do you know?
I don't know, squawking a lot, you know?
There's just a man who brought a parrot.
The art. Well, it is.
I mean, you know, there were weirdos everywhere, but in the
art community or whatever it's referred to the art planet, the
art orbit Galaxy, the universe. We exist.
I mean, the weirdos come out because I guess they're allowed
to. I mean, they're accepted, which
is fine, which is great, But there were also a lot of
prosthetic Jews. Right, because.
It came from Muncie, Williamsburg, Crown Heights.
You had someone helping you on a painting, right?
Who's an Orthodox Jew in Finney? Yeah, Penny.
Penny yeah, I was interested, you know, throughout your life,
seems to me that you kind of seek spirituality, whether it's
from your time on the reservation to the Jewish work
that you do now, connecting with your heritage.
Is there anything that really resonates with you and what
you've learned? I like that you took notice that
I seek spirituality. I do.
And I was asked not long ago,
what keeps you painting? Clearly I have bills to pay and
I love my life and I'm blessed and somebody up there likes me.
And if I can make art, I'm going to make art because my God, who,
who I could not have imagined this back in the day that I
would be doing this. I find my work the spiritual
stronghold. I find even sitting in my yard
sketching, say a bird, it could be a nearby blue Jay or a
Sparrow, you know, because I do birding.
I love birds. You know, I'd study birds and I
study a lot of animal life, but birds in particular because you
know, they're, they're like, you know, they're dinosaurs and they
intrigued me. And even that even putting even
filling the blank page with marks that that amount to a
replication of a bird that I'm seeing in real life.
There's something incredibly spiritual about that connection
that I'm sharing that time and space with the bird, that I'm
capturing it on paper, that that paper will be around forever
unless it's lost, you know? But the point being is that my
take away from seeking spirituality, it's not over.
I mean, I can answer that on my deathbed because I don't know.
I mean, I just do it because, well, one, the world is chaotic.
There's a lot of chaos, there's a lot of noise.
And I seek, without knowing it, I think I seek quiet.
And at the studio is a very quiet place, even though, you
know, I might have music on or podcasts or whatever, or guests
and I'm speaking to them or talking.
But, you know, in my mind, paintings are very quiet.
I don't ever associate noises or sounds with my work.
It's weird. But I, you know, like they're
quiet. There's these contemplative
places. And I, I think, you know, the
take away for that is really, if I have to, I mean, the reason
why I've been seeking is because I need it.
I think I just need. I thrive on that quiet place.
Two years ago on my show, I had a rabbi, very famous Rabbi Manus
Friedman. And one of the things I dug up
about him that was not well known because I always like to
dig things up about my guests that are not obvious on the
surface. He is a healer, so he has people
fly in from all over the world. They could have diseases or, you
know, emotional turmoil, and he will heal them.
And I heard of somebody he does this out of Minnesota or he used
to. And I'm from Minnesota.
So I know a lot of people who know of Manus Friedman.
One of the stories that I was able to share with him is
someone had told me that their son had some ear infection that
wouldn't go away and he had like horrible Vertigo because of it.
And they went to rap by Manus Friedman.
He wrote, put something down a piece of paper, gave them a
piece of paper. So I put it in your pocket,
forget about it. And that was it.
Then an infection went away at some point.
And then after that, the kid was like, well, what was written on
the paper, right? Because there's this paper in
the pocket. He was was forget about.
Of course, he looked and it was the some random word they
Googled a word. It's a Latin word for the root
of some plant. The plants meant to reduce
infection. So the question is, why did he
do all of that? And I asked him about that.
I was like, why? That's really a bizarre thing to
do, right? And he said, the reason I do
that is because Judaism believes that words and things that we
kind of emit outward that we put on paper have energy.
So if I write a word on a piece of paper that and the word is
about healing, then I've created that energy on the piece of
paper for the person to heal. And I think that's kind of like
the philosophy on art is you're putting this energy onto paper
to kind of make sense of the world.
It's just another medium. It's not a word.
It's it's a drawing. That's very It's wonderful to
make that connection. Yeah, it's just funny because it
was like 2 years on the dot that I had him and we talked about
this and now I get to speak with someone who who does it in a
different way, but the message is kind of the same.
I definitely have no powers. I do believe in the power it's
going to sound. This is probably the most cliche
thing I've ever said in my life. But I do believe in the power of
love and I think if love is conveyed through art or through
any form of like a medium, like you say, healing, you know,
people take notice. I mean, we are animals.
We feel the vibe of other creatures and just as humans
might feel the so-called vibe of another human and you know, they
have a connection. And I think that's the great
thing about art is that there's this connection that's there's
this viable means to connect to others without ever really
knowing it. Like, but yet, you know
somewhere out there someone is feeling something from what it
is that I've made. Yeah, so moving us on to a less
woo woo topic, I wanted to understand where the tracksuit
came from. I was watching too many Soprano
episodes. This came much earlier because
the oddly, you know, I love The Sopranos and people, you know,
so I'm going to admit this. No one knows it.
I moved to Montclair, NJ, you know, with my kids and I did not
know that Sopranos were filmed out there.
But when I moved out there and I was wearing my Puma track suit
and, you know, I also have matching pants and people like,
dude, what are you? What are you that inspired by
The Sopranos? I'm like, come on, man.
I like a few people on that show wore track suits, but you know,
it was kind of funny, you know, and but prior to that, I
remember distinctly looking for a jacket that was lightweight
that I could wear, that I could always have my wallet and my
keys on my person, but without being in my pants pockets.
I always hated things in my pants pockets always.
I never understood that. It just feels, you know, on the
tuchus. It feels like an extra lump,
feels like you got a bulge and you don't need in the front.
It's just weird. Like, you know, when I had a lot
of keys, I had keys. I, you know, at a car, at a
studio. I so I, you know, and I grew up,
you know, playing sports and, you know, you know, I knew Puma.
I know Adidas, Adidas, you know, the whole nature of the story
between the German brothers. Yeah.
And Nike, of course. So I tried a Nike coat and
Adidas coat and then Puma coat, and the Puma coat fit the best,
and it still fits the best. And I've been wearing it for 20,
for 20 years. But I always just liked it.
It's black with a white stripe. And I have this affinity, wore
stripes on sleeves. And when I was studying, the
Lakota wore shirts, the same shirts that they wore when they
defeated Custer and the 7th Cavalry, you know, wore shirts
for the Indians. They would bead the sleeves on
the outside. And I always was blown away by
that design. And I thought why they should
make, you know, shirts like that.
And then I realized, oh, my God, they do.
It's called a track suit or a track jacket.
I loved things on the sleeves. There's a motorcycle store in
Williamsburg, because we were living in Williamsburg before we
moved to Montclair called Jane's Motorcycles, and it's a great
store. You know, they have a little
cafe in there. So I used to take my son in
there and look at them like these motorcycles they built and
they would serve, you know, like blueberry muffins and coffee.
And they had a black long sleeve shirt with the word Jane
Motorcycle down the side of it. And I bought as many as I could
of those just to have them. I don't know where they are now,
but I wear it continually and everybody takes notice.
They're like, oh, dude, I never would have known you at say, you
know, at the Armory Show or the another art fair like Art Basel.
The people said, oh, I knew it was you because of the jacket.
And I said, really? They said, yeah, look around.
Do you think people are wearing Puma track suits at an art fair?
I mean, no way. They're, you know, And I was
like, OK. And then I just, you know, I
always wore it and people kept commenting on it, so now it's
become my thing. Stock.
Yeah, The funny thing is stock. If you read Puma, but you read
it using the letters in the Russian alphabet, it spells the
word Rita, which is my name. So you are wearing my name?
And that's So what? That's so cool and only you
could say that to me. Because that's my name in
Russian. Plus, it's a nice logo of the
Puma. Yeah, leaping, you know, and I
take great pride in that. Like it's a well designed logo.
I mean better than Nike and Adidas.
There's someone that you need to meet in Montclair, now that I
know. That that's for you.
We should talk about this later then.
OK, Myron Sugarman, the last living Jewish gangster.
I thought I was a gangster. Wait for real?
Yeah, he lives there. Sugarman.
Yeah, he's like the modern day Meyer Lansky.
Yeah. Bugsy Siegel, Uncle Myron.
For real. Well, OK, but we should talk
about it. OK, tell me, how can people
connect with you and keep up with your work?
I would love if anybody has the wherewithal to get through this
my nonsense, they should message me on Instagram.
I would like to hear from people.
My Instagram back in the day, I wouldn't have like I never
thought it would. It's a good thing.
I mean, it's like I get, there's a lot I get to share, you know,
from my interests, not just about my art, but you know, the
Broadway shows I attend with my daughter.
I talk about the food that I might cook.
Like I just cooked a bison steak for my son.
I always talk about animals and you know, I find it like a way
to entertain, you know, and I love to know that people are
kind of joining me on this crazy trip.
So my Instagram is simply the Dark Menace, which is, I got to
tell you, I can't take credit for it.
You know, my students back in college nicknamed me the Dark
Menace, and I didn't know why for like a week.
I couldn't figure it out. Because it's the flip of the.
Letter my initials. So not Mark Dennis, but dark
menace. Why?
Because I wore dark clothing. I was kind of a brooding human.
I had dark hair, dark eyes, and I don't know, I always wear
black and they're like the dark menace.
And I was like, OK, whatever. I thought they were talking
about me being abrasive or just Moody.
That might be the case. But nonetheless, it it occurred
to me, I'm like, you guys are all going to get an A for the
next project. This is a brilliant nickname.
So that's my handle or or whatever it's called.
And your gallery is still in Chelsea, right?
Harper's is in Chelsea. Harper's gallery.
Harper's, 22nd St. Yeah, I show with him and anyone
in Manhattan. I have absolutely, in fact, Mark
calendars. September 10th I believe, is the
opening of my next solo show with him.
Oh my gosh, I'm excited. OK, amazing.
And I have one final. Question say like a Minnesotan,
Oh my gosh, you're not that far from South Dakota.
You know you, you must not I've. Been to South and I've been to a
reservation. Pine Ridge Pine Ridge, you know,
it's right off Custer State National Park, which is.
I've been to a reservation. It's really, it's like the
second you cross, the energy kind of really changes, I think.
So for someone who understands the history, and I'll just leave
it at this, it's inspiring For someone who doesn't know the
history and just kind of drifts upon the Reds because you can
drive through it, it's pretty depressing.
But I'm there, you know, I imagine, you know, the bison
still moving across and no borders.
And you know, I romanticize it because I, I, why not?
Yeah, because you had that chapter in your life, I have one
final question for you. It's one that I ask every guest
of the show. Who would you like to nominate
for people? Do you want to know?
Well, the first person that comes to mind is the person I
had. You had mentioned that you had
been to the opening of my show and Adam Cohen, who owns A Hug
from the Art World, very active, also in his own way.
The Jewish community gave me that opportunity to have these
paintings presented where I don't think any other gallery
would have given me that shot. You know, the show was called 3
Jews Walk into a Bar. I mean, it's all and he was very
happy about it and I don't know he'd make a pisser guest.
Plus he has a wicked accent. I don't know where that he's
from. Like somewhere in England.
I don't know if he's like, it's like Speaking of Ozzy.
Oh, sold. Got it.
Thank you. Thank you so much for doing
this. This is.
Yeah, thank you for the invite. Yeah, OK.
Thanks for the invite. I I loved it.
I love doing this. I could talk all day, actually.
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